Generally, I see a claim of the form “All GOP members are comfortable with supporting Nazis [authoritarianism, generally], and all their voters are comfortable with supporting racists/racism.” Which, honestly, is pretty hard to argue isn’t true at this point.
Yes. And, because I can’t read their minds, I can’t really tell the difference between supporting the GOP because you’re a racist and supporting the GOP for other reasons. Effectively, they help to advance a racist agenda, and the racist agenda is transparently clear, so they’re racists.
I have to agree. It’s pretty interesting how many Republicans don’t see themselves that way, though, even when they clearly are racist assholes.
The older generation in my family (so my parents, aunts, and uncles) are just like that. I’ve told this before here on Qt3, but I was in New Orleans a year or two after Katrina hit. Shortly after getting back, I was at a family dinner and they of course ask how New Orleans was. I told them about all the cool stuff around the city, but mentioned how shocking it was that I could still see a lot of damage from Katrina.
I meant that in a “it totally opened my eyes to just how devastating that storm was” way, but they all took it and ran in the other direction. For the rest of the dinner, there was a lot of clucking around the table how sad it was that all the lazy blacks just laid around waiting for the government and taxpayers to fix all their problems instead of fixing their own homes. How if this was a white city, you’d see it back in shape in no time. You should have seen the umbrage and outrage when I pointed out how incredibly racist that was. I think for a decent chunk of remaining Republicans, they think they can’t be racist because they let a black family attend their church without lynching any of them or something.
Yes, this is the thing about what support for a transparently racist agenda implies: Either they see the agenda for what it is and support it, in which case they are consciously choosing racism; or they see the agenda as perfectly normal thinking and support it, in which case they’re seriously, unconsciously racist.
Speaking from the perspective of the circles that I came from and my extended family still inhabits, I’d say “comfortable” might be a bit too strong for many of those who vote GOP, but they certainly see racism (and misogyny) as the lesser evils. The greater evil is diluting the American culture, by which they actually mean Protestant/evangelical Christian culture. Big issues are abortion (killing babies!), treating LGBTQ on the same level as heterosexual relationships (God sez that’s wrong!), and limiting religious “freedom” (which means Christian values, of course, no other religions matter in their minds).
I’ve had many conversations with my family and friends who fall into this category, and we usually end up agreeing on most of the issues. Raising taxes on the wealthy would be fine, they’re OK with a reasonable welfare system, there’s no love for giant corporations, immigration is fine (especially if they’re Christians, of course), improving education and making higher ed widely available would be great, etc. But when it comes to choosing candidates, they simply don’t look past the big three issues, considering those (especially abortion) to be so overwhelmingly important that anyone who supports their view must be the right choice no matter how terrible they may be on other issues.
As long as the GOP opposes (even if only lip service) those things and the Democrats support them, that segment of the voting population is going GOP. And it’s a pretty hefty segment, because the rural/suburban church-going crowd tends to turn out at the polls.
I got out of that segment by learning to think for myself and realizing that A) some of those issues are just wrong and B) even if I still believe in some aspects, just how harmful it was to blindly focus on those issues at the voting booth. But that’s not going to happen for the majority. As far as I can see, the only way we’d make any progress in changing that block of voters is by changing the message coming out of the pulpits.
I live in red country. I know lots and lots of Republicans that are not the least bit racist, or misogynistic, or fascist, or even stupid for that matter. They’re college educated, average to above-average income, suburban mostly white men and women. They think the Trump rallies are stupid and a waste of time and resources, they’re disappointed in the Administration overall, and they’re not big fans of the increasing political divide in America (mainly because it paints them in a bad light). HOWEVER, they will continue to close their eyes and vote GOP because (choose one or more from below):
- SCOTUS
- Pro Life
- Pro 2nd Amendment Rights / NRA Member
- But Her Emails
- Veteran / Pro-Military
- Catholic / Christian (aka Family Values)
- Tax Breaks / Business Deregulation / Got Mine
- Obamacare / Fear Of A “Socialist” America
I really like and respect some of these people (talking about the ones I know personally), but Jesus H., I just can’t wrap my head around how they can bury their heads in the sand to everything that’s happening and STILL vote GOP. I want to believe the majority of the ones I’ve spoken to about it won’t vote Trump again…at least from their comments, but who the hell knows. Hopefully they become so disenfranchised that they simply stay home in November 2018 and November 2020. If not, then friends or not, they deserve the “racist” and “fascist” tags they’ll receive, as at this point you really can’t justify sticking by the GOP hoping for moderates to take back over. It’s not going to happen, and if you vote GOP, you’re just empowering the far right and the hate.
I think conservatives often define ‘racists’ as people who do bad things to black people. Merely thinking or saying bad things? Well, that’s just free speech. If you fire all the black people in your company or throw a brick through someone’s window, then you’re a racist. But merely telling funny jokes or holding opinions because “that’s just how I was raised…” is normal, not racist.
I’m (obviously, I hope) not defending this thinking.
Maybe, but the list of things that are important to them is instructive. They want SCOTUS judges who will end abortion, which is a religious position; which is to say, an expression of religious dominance and bigotry. Indeed, they vote for Trump in order to promote their religion which is the same thing as oppressing the faith of others.
They want guns so they can imagine shooting people, which raises the question of who they imagine shooting.
They’re outraged by Clinton’s errors because she’s a woman; Trump’s own use of private communication services doesn’t seem to bother them at all, because he’s a man, their man.
They think the role of government is to let them keep what they have, and let the less fortunate suffer, only they say it’s about letting the lazy, shiftless poor reap their reward. Who do they imagine the lazy undeserving poor are?
They’re bigots. Misogynists. Racists.
OK. But you recognize that they do not see it that way, right? If you don’t start conversations with that understanding, you will never convince anyone to change their mind.
Maybe you don’t care. But for people who actually interact with conservatives on a daily basis, “fuck 'em, they’re all evil fascists” has absolutely no value. It simply causes them to dig in and conclude, “fuck 'em, they’re all unhinged SJWs.” It doesn’t matter if you’re right and they’re wrong.
The problem is, even if challenged with facts that refute their positions, they will just double down on their beliefs. It is more important to remain a part of the tribe than it is to be wrong.
Some of them don’t see it that way, and others do.
Who are those people? The ones who actually interact with conservatives every day? I’m pretty sure I’m one of them, and I confess I don’t know what ‘value’ I’m supposed to be getting out of that interaction. Do tell.
I thought you were retired somewhere in south america?
I mean people who live in red districts, or who work in industries dominated by conservatives. I absolutely do not ‘interacting’ via the internet. If you’re having regular, face-to-face conversations with conservatives, I can’t imagine how those go if you consider them all to be racists.
Max Boot puts “willful blindness” into context a bit in his new book (excerpted in the WaPo opinions section):
And I’ll put in a little plug for “low-interest voters”, mostly because I used to be one.
I was raised in a solidly Republican household. Dad was an Air Force officer and both he and Mom were staunch Catholics. The GOP in the 80s was the party of fiscal responsibility and a robust, dogged opposition to the Soviet Union. Racism was something that afflicted both parties, I was told.
One of my earliest political memories was reading an article for a class in middle-school in 1979: See, there was this guy named Strom Thurmond, and according to the article he used to be this SUPER racist asshole Democrat who opposed desegregation and all that stuff. But now he was a Republican and for the 25th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, he was being honored by the NAACP for his efforts to reduce poverty in Black areas of South Carolina.
So for me – for decades – the GOP and racism simply weren’t associated in my mind; racism was something that happened across party lines. The information was surely there, but I never bothered to look at it; I was too busy working, studying, or raising my family.
So I reckon that there are a slew of people like the younger-me out there, solidly in the Republican camp and also almost wholly ignorant about the actual actions of the GOP. Now granted, I think it’s a lot harder to be that ignorant now – I could watch Johnny Carson each night and not really hear much about politics; it’s much harder to turn into Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel and say the same thing.
Sure, but:
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I am not alone here. There are many American conservatives.
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I lived most of my life in red districts, and worked in industry and at a level where I was surrounded by conservatives.
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Many of my family members are conservatives.
How do those conversations go for you? You surely know some people who are racists, and (like me) can’t avoid interacting with them.
More importantly, what does knowing that they’re racists have to do with anything else? I’m not talking with racists, here, trying to change their minds. I’m explaining my view to people who are not racists. And if I were talking with racists, trying to change their minds, I don’t think I’d have any chance at all if I simply pretended they weren’t racists.
Do you live in some kind of enclave of american expatriates? It seems weird that you’d be living in a foreign country but be surrounded by many American conservatives.
You know the old saying: you can catch more racists with honey than with vinegar.
Well, not really. I haven’t read the book, but I have seen these quotes, and I don’t think he says he was blind to the coded racist appeals; rather, he just thought the rational conservative arguments he and his fellows offered were more important to expanding conservatism than those coded racist appeals. Now he says maybe he was wrong, which is good, except for the maybe part. And if he actually says that he did not see or recognize the coded racist appeals, then he’s just not telling the truth, because he isn’t stupid.
I live in Cuenca, Ecuador, a city of about half a million people, of whom something on the order of 10k people are extranjeros. Most of those are gringos, norteamericanos, and a good many of them are conservatives. So, of course, we tend to know each other, and if you socialize at all, you’ll run into them. Even if you don’t seek them out, you’ll run into them.
My father is an expat living in The Netherlands and foreigners living overseas tend to know each other, because they have similar experiences and needs especially when dealing with the host nation.
That being said, he has a leg up, since his wife/my mother is actually Dutch, so that makes a huge difference, but there are plenty of retiree that have decided to stay in the Netherlands after working there for several years/decades.
You see it a lot with the civilians that work for the department of Defense, especially the teachers and administrators. Some go back to the United States after they retire, some decide to stay put.
i live in a red county too. There are more Republicans here than any other group. Spend more than 2-3 hours with any of them, and some really racist stuff often comes out of their mouth, and they will always, always tell you that they’re not racist. I have yet to meet a single person who can spend a few hours talking about something and that not come out. That’s clearly not every Republican, but five minutes doesn’t do it. You need to give them hours and several topics… hell even a movie, a freaking movie or a TV show and suddenly you’re in the Twilight zone.